Kyoko Koizumi -- Banana Moon de Aimashou（バナナムーンで会いましょう）

For tonight's Captain Obvious phrase, I would like to iterate that Kyon-Kyon is the one at the very bottom of the above photo.

I've made mention of the fact that I have some lingering audio tapes from way back in my high school and university days. At this point, they seem to be content acting as curios of a different audio age or as possible food for my voracious tape recorder Jaws; hopefully, they can still act as vessels to provide those kayo from yesterday.

One of those tapes, a Maxell XLII, contains a goodly sum of 80s aidoru tunes and at the end of Side 1 is Kyoko Koizumi's（小泉今日子）"Banana Moon de Aimashou" (Let's Meet Under the Banana Moon). Well, I haven't dared to put in that tape into Jaws as of yet, but luckily, there's the YouTube video of this track from Kyon-Kyon's 5th album "Betty" from July 1984. Hadn't heard this one in literally decades, so I figure once things become as normal as they can, I really ought to purchase that BEST compilation of hers.

Ah....that refrain in "Banana Moon" engaged those memory engrams. I'm referring to how she seems to yell the title at the titular natural satellite of Earth while the background singers keep her grounded. Indeed, it's an interesting effect and effective, too, since I had my "Ah! I remember this one!" moment. Prolific composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）has crafted a 1950s-ish moony-eyed ballad out of "Banana Moon" while prolific lyricist Chinfa Kan（康珍化）creates a story of a young woman out on the moonlit beach pining for that significant other. Tis a nice way to finish off "Betty".

The album peaked at No. 3 on the Oricon album charts and it ended up as the 35th-ranked album for 1984. Good to hear Kyon-Kyon again after so long.

Yujiro Ishihara & Aki Yashiro -- Wakare no Yoake（別れの夜明け）

Of course, the NHK music shows are in reruns and we got to see the final "Songs of Japanese Spirit" for 2019 earlier this afternoon. I heard a lot of good kayo and was hoping to write about some of them, only to find out that I had already written about them. When I've been writing articles on the blog for over 8 years, some of them will eventually slip my mind. That included Yujiro Ishihara's（石原裕次郎）"Kita no Tabibito"（北の旅人）; wrote that all the way back in 2014.

However, I really wanted to get The Tough Guy back up and running on the blog once more, so I went to a source on J-Wiki. There's a list there which originated from the August 2005 issue of "Kamzine" magazine and it gives the Top 20 Ishihara singles in terms of sales. No. 16 happens to be a duet between him and enka singer Aki Yashiro（八代亜紀）called "Wakare no Yoake" (Parting at Daybreak) from 1974.

Once again, this is one of those kayo that to me kinda straddles the line between enka and Mood Kayo as Ishihara and Yashiro lovingly exchange those final words of tender love before making that necessary separation. Something about that arrangement and the fact that it's Ishihara singing has me thinking the quintessential Mood Kayo scenery of a lonely guy in a bar, and yet, the tenderness of the bare melody by Yukihiko Ito（伊藤雪彦）reminds me more of an enka ballad. Mitsuo Ikeda（池田充男）provided the bittersweet words. I don't know how "Wakare no Yoake" did on Oricon but it did sell 620,000 records, around the same amount as his earlier hit as a much younger man "Arashi wo Yobu Otoko"（嵐を呼ぶ男）from 1956.

(empty karaoke version)

Marlene with Seawind -- Let Yourself Go

I see that title and I get hungry for that old Pizza Hut pizza. It was always the Super Supreme for me and back in my university days, my buddies and I would hit a branch near U of T. They always had those $5 Thursdays deals where every 5~10 minutes or so, the server would offer various slices of pizza. Indeed we let ourselves go to Pizza Hut, and after absorbing all that fat and calories, I definitely let myself go.

Once again, I use a desperate segue to bring us all to another cool urban contemporary number for tonight, "Let Yourself Go", a track from "Summer Nights", the July 1982 album featuring the collaboration between singer Marlene and fusion band Seawind. Usually the main vocalist for Seawind was Pauline Wilson, a name that is known here at "Kayo Kyoku Plus" because of her own collaborations with Yutaka Yamakawa（山川豊）on songs such as "Say You Do".

I was delighted to also find out that along with Wilson, Seawind also had saxophonist Larry Williams and trumpeter Jerry Hey, both of whom have worked with other Japanese singers. Hey is someone that I've especially seen in a number of liner notes on other albums, notably the ones for Anri（杏里）, so whenever I see his name in the list, I know that I'm going to get some fine horns. Certainly, I'm receiving those as I listen to "Let Yourself Go". My internal City Pop meter threw out a big PING when I heard this one for the first time.

When I searched at the JASRAC database about the songwriters behind "Let Yourself Go", I found out that it was a creation by Richard J. Rudolph and Leon Ware. If it is indeed the same Richard J. Rudolph, he's the songwriter and musician who was married to the late great Minnie Riperton of "Lovin' You" fame and later married retired singer Kimiko Kasai（笠井紀美子）. He also happens to be the father of actress/comedian Maya Rudolph, formerly of "Saturday Night Live".

Fujiro -- Ai no Yukue: Did You Find It?（愛の行方）

Found some City Pop in the form of the late Fujiro's（ふじろう）first track from his sole album "I'm In Love" from 1980. A nice pleasant strut in the city courtesy of Fujiro Sugitani（杉谷夫二朗）, the name he uses for his compositions, the songwriter also provided the lyrics for "Ai no Yukue: Did You Find It?" (The Direction of Love) in which he asks his old love whether she's found her way in romance once more as he still struggles for his. He's backed up here by Mai Yamane（山根麻衣）, according to the liner notes in "Light Mellow ~ City" which includes the song.

Fujiro had a wonderfully soulful voice which makes the fact that he supposedly left the mike for good after less than two years following his debut in May 1979 all that much more disappointing. According to a January 2009 episode of the late-night TV Asahi variety show "Knight Scoop" via the J-Wiki article for the singer, he appeared on an NHK music program (that invited viewers to send in their own songs) to sing a song that had been created by a high school student titled "El Dorado". However, for whatever reason, he couldn't get the right key and sometimes forgot the lyrics, with the whole experience traumatizing him so much that he announced his retirement at a concert in 1980 in Yonago City.

Afterwards, he would hold local music events and manage venues such as a live house and a cram school, but thanks to that feature on "Knight Scoop", he made a comeback later that year by releasing a new single, "Anata ni Ii Tabi wo"（あなたにいい旅を...Have A Good Trip）that would be sold nationwide. You can also check out his duet with Miwako Hiro（広美和子）, "Walking In The Rain".

Kazumi Watanabe -- Black Canal

I've been waiting to get this particular track up for a while now and finally I get to do it. But let me get this out of my system...something about that iconography for the album cover has me thinking Pac-man!

Anyways, I've been listening to a number of tracks from guitarist Kazumi Watanabe's（渡辺香津美）May 1980 fusion album "To Chi Ka", and they're all great. However the one that has stood out for me is Track 2, "Black Canal" at 6:45 of the above video for the entire album. Reading the Wikipedia article for "To Chi Ka", the album is jam-packed with some of the finest musicians from jazz, rock and the middle ground of fusion including Kenny Kirkland on keyboards, Marcus Miller on bass, and Steve Jordan on percussion.

I won't pretend that I'm in the know for any of these virtuosos, but my immediate reaction on hearing "Black Canal" is that this must have been the melodic equivalent of an All-Star game in one of the major team sports such as baseball or hockey. This was the type of music that I used to listen to on radio at home and in the car even before I realized that I enjoyed it, and "Black Canal" is the amped-up version with Watanabe, Kirkland, et al. immensely embracing their jam sessions. I've read that a lot of the album included plenty of improvisation and it's incredible to hear all of these people in synch with each other.

"To Chi Ka" hit No. 10 on Oricon. According to the J-Wiki article for the album, it was named after Watanabe's Hokkaido dog, Tochika.🐕

Polkadot Stingray -- JET

From Wikipedia

Here I thought that when I first heard the band Polkadot Stingray（ポルカドットスティングレイ）, I assumed that the members just threw together a couple of unrelated words on the Scrabble board. Fortunately, contributor T-cat set me right a few years ago when he provided the first article for the band on KKP via their "Telecaster Stripe". The animal does exist!

Listening to "Telecaster Stripe", which was their 3rd single from March 2016, I got that thrashing guitar rock immediately, and it was no wonder since vocalist and songwriter Shizuku（雫）was a big fan of Ringo Shiina（椎名林檎）. As Shiina has evolved since those early days at the turn of the century, I think Polkadot Stingray may have also changed, at least according to their most recent single, their 4th digital download from March 2020, "JET".

There's less thrash and quite a bit more groove and jazz in "JET" to the extent that I had to check over "Telecaster Stripe" once more just to make sure that I did indeed have the right band. However for me, Shizuku has some of that softer-edged Ringo in her vocals. I've yet to check out some of their other songs over the years but if any of you have any other recommendations, I'm all ears.

Kenji Sawada -- Koi wa Jamamono（恋は邪魔もの）

Knowing about singer and bon vivant Kenji Sawada（沢田研二）ever since I really got into Japanese popular music in the early 1980s, I have to admit that in all likelihood I've only scratched the surface of one of the most flamboyant kayo singers.

Luckily, commenter bon dropped by to give me some suggestions on the last article for Julie. One of his favourite by Sawada from the 1970s is "Koi wa Jamamono" (Love is a Pain). Released in March 1974 as his 9th single, this is a bouncy but perhaps-not-completely-happy number according to Kazumi Yasui's（安井かずみ）lyrics in which an arrogant young cad feels that his latest young conquest is a bit too clingy, and yet he just can't seem to get rid of her in his mind and perhaps his soul. Maybe a reckoning is coming for him finally.

The pop/rock melody is provided by Kunihiko Kase（加瀬邦彦）and performing the music behind Sawada is the Takayuki Inoue Band（井上堯之バンド）, the same group behind one of the most famous television themes in Japanese history, the theme for the cop show "Taiyo ni Hoero"（太陽にほえろ）. Katsuo Ono（大野克夫）, one of the members of that band, handled the arrangement. "Koi wa Jamamono" went all the way up to No. 4 on Oricon, and it became the 44th-ranked single for 1974.

While I was working on this article, I found out at one point that I couldn't import the videos for some reason. I was a bit worried that the YouTube masters weren't happy at me for some reason, but then when I checked Twitter, it looks everyone was finding out that the video service had gone down. Folks were kinda freaking out there. Thankfully, it was only out for about 15 minutes. Whew!😓